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PAL Lands Order From Ruwel Of Germany
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There are double celebrations at PAL - Process Automation International Ltd -
for not only have they landed their first order for a plating line from Germany
since 1994, but the machine on order from RUWEL will be a record breaker, for
it will be the widest that PAL has ever made.
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"It goes without saying that we are delighted to have received this order from
the RUWEL group for a pattern plate machine with pulse plating, eductors and
auto load/unload," says Geoff Paterson, PAL's Managing Director. "The new line,
which will be housed in a specially built extension at the production site
Geldern I at the RUWEL Headquarters in Geldern, will have a 5.75m wide tank,
breaking our previous record by more than 50 cm, and is being designed to
produce 19,000 panels each week. We will be delivering it in October and it
will be fully commissioned by January/February 2003."
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"We are impressed not only by PAL's professionalism and engineering competence,
but by the opinion of other users of PAL equipment," explains Ad van der Kruijs,
Member of the Executive Board of the RUWEL AG, responsible for technology.
"Before making our final decision we saw PAL machines in operation at Aspocomp
at Salo in Finland and Prestwick Circuits in Scotland. What we saw, and the
comments made by the people in Finland and Scotland about the quality of plating
and PAL's after-sales service, helped us make our decision and we duly placed
our order for the new line with PAL."
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Jos Van Kempen (2nd from right) hands over the PO and
cheque to Tony Evans of PAL watched by Geoff Paterson
and Kenneth Wong.
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RUWEL is very firmly one of the major global players in the circuit board industry
and a company with a long and distinguished history. It was founded in 1945 and
initially produced capacitors. In 1956 they introduced the series-produced
single-sided printed circuit to the market place - the first European company
to do so. By 1957 the company was producing double-sided through hole PCBs and
multilayer production began in 1961 - the rest, as they say, is history. RUWEL
is justifiably proud of its position as one of the biggest circuit board
manufacturers in Europe.
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The group now has seven highly specialised production plants in Germany and
Denmark. "We pride ourselves on our ability to offer 'One Stop Shopping'/'Single
Sourcing' to our customers," says Ad van der Kruijs. "We offer virtually all
types of boards for a wide range of technologies and in quantities ranging
from development samples to runs in their millions. We know how important it
is to work with our customers to ensure that we produce exactly what they need -
and we know that this is PAL's business maxim too; it is this commonality of
approach that is making for a productive relationship with PAL. Each of our
plants specialises in particular areas. At our plant Geldern I, where the new
PAL line will be installed, we have a workforce of 380 and manufacture PCBs with
plated-through holes up to eight layers in medium sized lots and in large quantities.
We are very much looking forward to the new machine being in full production in
the first quarter of 2003."
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Information on RUWEL is available from www.ruwel.de.
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Process Automation in Europe is exhibiting at EPC 2002 - Hall 14.2, stand 5018.
The focus will be on PAL’s vertical and horizontal plating capability, their
new continuous vertical project will be featured as will their global reach,
there are PAL machines in 36 countries.
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24 August 2002
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